50%

March 12, 2010; 11:59 AM • by Ross Catrow

Five years ago I was filling out the paperwork to rent a tuxedo for my third wedding of the year — I was a very popular groomsman in the early aughts. I insouciantly wrote my weight down as 165, because honestly! It was my mid twenties! Insouciant was my middle name. My friend glanced over and said, “Whoa, fatty.”

You know how weird little things like that stick with you? Like when your dad says “You don’t have what it takes, Jack”? THIS WAS THAT. Especially, last fall when I had fatified up to 180lbs* and none of my pants fit anymore. Listen, I’m not trying to be all “Oh, I am sooooo fat, look at me, GIVE ME BONBONS.” I’m just saying that one of my life goals is not to be a buddy chubbster. That was when I implemented the Fifty Percent Diet — which I will now describe in its entirety:

Eat 50% of what you would normally eat.
Drink as much as you want.
Never exercise.

This incredibly simple “diet” has lost me twenty pounds**. TWENTY POUNDS, PEOPLE. And you should see the amount of beer I drink and exercising I don’t do. It boggles the mind.

A thing about diets: you gotta get one that fits who you are — your essence. Part of my essence is imbibing alcohol while, generally, sitting around. Another thing that I’ve learned about my self, during my souciant late twenties, is that I’m a terribly practical, discrete, list-oriented man. And the implementation of this diet really appeals to me: eat fifty percent of the contents of your plate. Can you get anymore discrete?

Implementation

The recommended portion of meat for a single human meal is about the size of a deck of cards. Not six decks of cards, just one. Which is why this diet is at its easiest to implement when you eat out or get takeout: literally just cut your massive cheeseburger from Carytown Burger and Fries in half. Wrap the other half up for lunch tomorrow. Not only are you losing weight, you’re losing money! Wait, saving money. Pizza is an easy one, too. Do you normally eat four pieces? (Whoa, fatty.) Just eat two. Guys, this is simple.

It gets a little harder when you cook at home — at least it does for me. It makes no sense to ladle a whole bowl of soup only to eat half of it and toss the rest. So usually, I’ll just try to serve myself smaller portions. This, however, is not very discrete and therefore difficult: I usually end up with 75% instead of 50%.

Drawbacks

Say you implement this diet. You successfully ate half of your Fu Jian yesterday and are pulling it out of the work mini-fridge for lunch today. Inevitably, some a-hole is going to ask you, “So are you going to eat half of that? And then half of that? AND THEN HALF OF THAT?” This is the single draw back to the diet: a-holes. Well, maybe it is a draw back of humans. YOU DECIDE.

—

Really, obviously, this whole thing is about portion control. The amount of food served to you by the “restaurant industry” is out of control, and once you think about it, kind of disgusting. 50% is just a simple way to not starve yourself, but eat a volume of food smaller than your head. Which is probably best for everyone.

* Just FYI over here, I’m 5’10”. At my heaviest I had a BMI of 25.8 — which is officially “overweight.”
** Results not typical? I will say, that so far its worked for 100% of the people who are on the diet.